it's all about the words we didn't say
by allisonarrgent
Summary: That was always the problem with us: you were everything I am, and everything I'm not. ––BellamyClarke.


**Notes:** I was supposed to be done with CW shows and their dumb ships a long time ago, but here we are again (spoiler alert: I don't think I'll ever be able to escape). Start Again by Gabrielle Aplin fits these two so well that it was really difficult for me to pick out a couple of lyrics. Just listen to the entire song if you want to feel my pain.

**Warnings:** 1x13 spoilers. That being said, we all know Bellamy isn't dead (I'm unsure about Finn?) but I thought I'd play around with Clarke thinking that he is.

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><p><strong><span>it's all about the words we didn't say<span>**

home is just a word without a time or place  
>i've fallen in and out of love with the loneliness i've traced<br>and i can't wait to start again  
>no i can't wait to start again<br>when the darkness and unknown become your friend  
><em>start again ––gabrielle aplin<em>

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><p>I have a lot of dreams these days. They're all about us and the moon and the places we won't go because you died and I don't know what anything that's happened to me since then means. I didn't dream at first because I didn't sleep at all. As soon as I recognized the growing level of my insomnia, however, strange, masked men started coming into my room at intervals that I can't keep track of to inject serum into my bloodstream that I suppose forces me to sleep – or worse. It's not like I have any real idea what the side effects of what they give me might be. And perhaps the dreams aren't even dreams, but hallucinations. I'm sure somewhere along the line, I did something to deserve this. The point is that you're haunting me because you're gone and Finn's gone because he tried to get to you – stubborn idiots, both of you, unable to abandon a losing fight – and we didn't get a chance to say goodbye.<p>

Here are the things I would tell you if I could: I trusted you. I hate you for making Finn prove himself to not be a coward – remember the bitter words you threw at each other after the beginning but before the end? Cause: _Dying in a fight you can't win isn't brave, Bellamy. It's stupid._ Effect: _Spoken like every coward who's ever run from a fight._ For once, I wish you would have listened to Finn, and that Finn wouldn't have acted like you. He ran to help you so you wouldn't die alone, and it wasn't just you two who died: I died with you. I wasn't lying when I said I needed you. As selfish as it is, I want you to be here, too, because I miss you. If we had an opportunity, I'd still want to go to the sea with you, and not just for the potential safe haven – it's the journey that would matter to me more than the destination.

It's a terrible thought that what we went through was a waste – the graves we dug for those we knew who left too soon, the physical and mental wounds we suffered in anticipation of something better later, the decisions we made and regretted because leading was harder when it went with believing. Having blind faith that tomorrow the world would work itself out and our struggles would lessen was never your style, and secretly, nor was it mine. We needed a plan of action to keep us going, something to lean on when things got rough. Maybe that's why people who inhabited Earth before the Ark era gave up so much in the name of religion. Turning to a higher power you can't see or hear is an addictive and mythical fix to problems you think you can't possibly solve on your own. No god came down to save them. No god is coming down to save us.

Spare me the recollection of your sins, because they're the same as mine. We're the same, you and I, whether in darkness or in light. In another life, I might have tried to kill Chancellor Jaha, just like you. You did everything you did out of love for your sister. I would have committed similar crimes for my father in an instant. I think treason runs in our veins, whatever the reason behind it may be. I couldn't let you feel sorry for yourself because nothing about me makes me any better than you. That's why it's a dangerous game, counting on parallel lines to never intersect. When you and I collided, we didn't diverge again. It's difficult to separate two lines when they become one line, running on forever although forever is a long time, because the spaces between them are impossible to define. It's not exactly rocket science to infer that the story of us is – was – will always be – a complicated one.

We didn't live so much as survive, but it was worth it for the vision of what could have been. I called it hope. You called it realism. We both agreed that the methods we resorted to were for the purpose of staying alive. That was always the problem with us: you were everything I am, and everything I'm not. We were pieces from different puzzles that fit together anyway, and I didn't realize it until it was too late. Now all we are is forgotten time. And if I could go back and change the way we met and clashed and coexisted and leaned on one another for not long enough before we fell apart, I wouldn't. All I would change is how I'm here surfing the aftershocks alone. I don't know how to be a leader when it seems like there's no one left to lead but myself away from insanity. I don't know how to find a solution that works, as morally ambiguous as it may be, without you by my side. I do know that people had to die, because that's what happens in the midst of war, but I never imagined it would be you. I never wanted it to.

When I catalogue the memories in my mind of you and I and everything we did contrasted with everything we didn't, I stumble upon something that I purposely missed a dozen times around. I almost mistake it for another dream or hallucination, but that's far from the truth. This is the reality of me and you, of pre–Send–The–Juvenile–Delinquents–On–A–Suicide–Mission and the end result of fingertips that tended to sway too close to each other. I didn't come to terms with it until weeks after our dropship landed, but even then, I didn't acknowledge it. What would I have said to you, anyway? There was nothing left to say about our past, even when it impacted our present and future. I didn't have the courage to state out loud that I recognized you from before, because all it meant was that you'd once received fleeting glances in the corridors between the stars from the girl who in your eyes was royalty when you were just a cadet, back when our hair was shorter and straighter and our hearts weren't burdened with desperation and hate. I was a princess and you were a guardsman in training. Neither of us was a hero or a villain. We weren't anything except different sets of perspectives and people to protect, and in my biased opinion, our story had far from begun yet.

I caught it in the lingering but hesitant way you looked at me on day forty–three, after a few deaths and bated breaths and pondering on the pointlessness of waking up in the mornings on this foreign planet that you knew what I knew, because gradually you'd started to see me as more than just an individual higher up on the hierarchy from our old lives. You didn't say anything about it, either. You didn't need to. The silence was answer enough that the record was set to zero and we were starting again – for the first time, for the second time, for the last time. I'm nothing if not an artist, so if you come back, I promise I'll sketch us a new beginning. It isn't over, Bellamy. We aren't the type of leaders who can simply give up. Our people need us. I'm without you and I still have a lot of work to do.

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><p><strong>AN:** Thanks so much for reading! I'd appreciate reviews!


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